Paradise Lost
by How Like a Winter
Summary: War, radiation, and the loss of a father took a toll on the Lone Wanderer. I stared at the picture where it lay inside the rusty metal locket and cleared my throat... "He looks like a nice man." One-shot.


Author's Note: This is not a one-shot about My Definitive Version of the Lone Wanderer, merely a what-if scenario.

* * *

Had she ever looked like that? I stared at the picture where it lay inside the rusty metal locket and cleared my throat. If nothing else, it gave me a minute to think of a suitable response. "He looks like a very nice man."

She nodded slowly and snapped the locket shut. "He was."

That picture must have been taken during her time in the Vault, for how else would her face have been so fresh and clean, her hair so shiny where today she had a scarred, bald head, her clothes so free of the mud and grime that now caked it? And the smile seemed so foreign to her face now that to imagine her grinning so cheerfully didn't fit in the slightest. "Well…enjoy your stay in the Citadel." The words sounded lame even to me. Clearly she wouldn't be enjoying anything for some time, and besides, what could an outsider enjoy here?

Without parting words, she simply walked away, putting one skinny leg in front of the other as if moving through syrup. Catching the eye of Scribe Rothchild, I motioned for him to come over to me. Rolling his eyes, he approached me and said, "What is it you require? I am quite busy, you know."

"You know the…the Lone Wanderer?" I grimaced at having to use that overly-dramatic nickname, which implied that she was the only wanderer in the Capital Wasteland where in reality they numbered thousands. But as long as she refused to give her real one, that would have to do.

"Of course I do! She keeps pestering me with silly questions and asking if I would like to take a look at her old pictures. What of her?"

Rothchild wasn't going to like this request. "Can you have someone watch over her while she's here to make sure she's eating?"

As expected, he bristled and replied, "Why on earth do we need to divert our limited resources to ensuring healthy eating habits from an outsider?"

"For whatever reason, Elder Lyons stresses her importance day in and day out. But in all her time here, I've never seen her eat, not once. When she wears that Raider armor you can see every last rib. She looks like she's been in a concentration camp." I didn't exaggerate, either. To this day I've never been able to count so many of a person's bones. "We can't have her dying on us."

He shrugged. "You think it's so important, _you_ do it."

"Permission to follow the outsider out of the Citadel, then?"

"Follow her to the grave for all I care, just get out of my hair so I can work on the damn robot."

Taking the hint, I left for the dining hall, and on the way passed a couple of giggling initiates. Kieran and Matthias weren't my closest friends, but it was good to keep up with the current inside jokes about a certain scribe's bald head or Peabody's latest blunder, so I stopped by and asked what had happened.

"The 'Lone Wanderer' happened," sneered Kieran. "Have you seen her today?"

"Yeah, why?"

"What was she doing?" He shared a glance at Matthias, and the two grinned.

That glance didn't bode well. Shrugging my shoulders, I answered, "She wanted to show me a picture."

"Yeah. That's what she's been doin' all day, and I mean _all day_. At sunup she was stumblin' around the labs like a drunk and insistin' we all look at it."

"_Why_?"

Kieran laughed. "Why don't she eat our food? Why's a ghoul follow at her heels? Why's she jump five feet in the air and run away every time Matt sneaks up on her? If I had a cap for every time I asked myself why the—"

I couldn't help myself. "You shouldn't do that," I told him, "scaring her like that. She's been to hell and back, Elder Lyons says."

"That's why she looks like a demon, then? Besides, she grew up in a _Vault_. Coddled little baby, she is." Kieran had lowered his voice now, a good move considering all the Citadel knights that passed by on their way to the dining hall. "A spoiled bitch—have you seen the pre-war outfit she wears sometimes? _No one_'s got clothes like that."

_A pre-war outfit?_ My eyes widened in shock. I had never seen one before, but some of the old advertisement posters depicted them, or what I assumed they must have been. Dresses, one-piece outfits of bright colors without a speck of residue on them were the stuff of legend. "An' I saw her readin' a copy of _Paradise Lost_," Matt said. "That's a fuckin' book, a pre-war _book_."

For a long moment I could think of nothing to say. "Well…it's true that she grew up in a vault, but that only makes it more difficult to adjust to the Wasteland, I'm sure. I don't know the whole story but I know she lost her friends and family in a single day, and found her father only to lose him again—"

"That ain't the only sob story around here," Kieran snarled. "We get people in all the time who got way more tragedies. One kid's whole village was eaten by ants or somethin'. And the pre-war pansy's upset 'cause her dad died? That's what old men _do_."

As much as it irked me, Kieran had a point. I had seen far worse-off civilians who handled their situations much stronger than the Lone Wanderer. But Elder Lyons hadn't told me all of her story, and neither at she, so for all I knew, some terrible secret had yet to be discovered. It wouldn't surprise me, all that time she had spend in the Wasteland. I could only ask myself how she had ever completed a single task for the Brotherhood of Steel, acting deaf and dumb like that. How had she trained to wear power armor? How had she located the G.E.C.K.?

Determined to see that she ate, I left the two and found her in the dining hall. Okay, so whoever named it had been deluding themselves—the 'dining hall' consisted of a few scattered tables and chairs, and those who could cook had been tasked with making sure the rest of us didn't starve. The Lone Wanderer, now clad in what must have been the pre-war dress, sat in the corner with that blasted ghoul and stared straight ahead with glassy blue eyes. The locket hung from her neck where she clasped the tiny heart in one hand, and I recalled how her eyes had looked so bright and clear in that portrait. An untouched plate sat in front of her but the ghoul ate, teeth sinking into rat meat like it was a Brahmin steak, and inched slightly closer to its master every time a passer-by so much as glanced at her.

When I had rat meat of my own on a rusty plate, complete with a bowl of dirty water, I set it down on their table. The ghoul glared at me. _It can't harm you here,_ I reminded myself, and pulled up a chair. The legs were uneven so that when I sat the chair rocked slightly to the left, in the Lone Wanderer's direction, and the ghoul hissed softly.

I looked directly in the Lone Wanderer's eyes. "Can I eat here?"

Her gaze remained blank. "_No_," muttered the ghoul.

"Are you…Charon?" The name sounded familiar, and since I knew the name of no other ghoul, I assumed that must be its name.

"What do you care? Leave us alone."

The Wanderer didn't seem to notice me at all, so I appealed to her ghoul. "I just want to make sure she's eating. She's practically emaciated, and the road ahead will be impossible if she is too weak to fight."

"The boss is not weak," Charon snapped.

"I-I didn't mean to imply that. But no one can go without food no matter how strong they are."

"She doesn't eat yer kind of food. But it doesn't matter. She'll be fine."

Everything it did proved how devoted it was to its master, but the ghoul just didn't comprehend the frailties of humans. "Why doesn't she eat it? If we had more variety, would she eat it then?" Now I was grasping at straws.

"You're right, smoothskin, that she's skin and bones. But she used to be much worse. Don't trouble yourself over it—I tell you she'll be fine."

The Lone Wanderer blinked then. She leaned across the table, the scoop in her pre-war dress revealing a mottled, bruised chest. I shuddered and she said, "Have you seen the picture?"

When I opened my mouth to say yes, Charon glared at me before sticking his fork into the rat meat on the Wanderer's plate. Wondering if ghouls could read minds, I immediately said, "Actually I haven't, will you show it to me?"

A tiny smile tugged at the corner of her thin lips and she broke open the heart. At that moment, while she bent over the bowl on my side of the table, Matt noticed her and grinned at me. Before I could react, his arm snaked out and pushed the Wanderer in the back. Face first, she dove into my bowl. Those watching gasped all at once.

Charon leapt up and yanked her out before whipping out his gun and thrusting it in Matt's face. "You're lucky I don't kill ya right now, bastard—"

"Hey hey hey, what's this about? Let's all put our weapons up." A few Citadel troops had gathered around. "What have you started, ghoul?"

"He didn't start anything," I said. "Matt pushed the outsider into my bowl." Matt shrugged and began to explain as best he could. The Wanderer's bare head now dripped on the table and her eyes were squeezed shut. Charon shouldered a wide-eyed knight out of the way, grabbed her arm, and jerked her out of the chair before pulling her behind him out of the dining hall entirely. It yelled curses at Matt the whole way.

As a few knights began to chastise Matt in low voices, others exchanged high-fives and snickered at the Wanderer as she stumbled behind the ghoul. "Who's the master now?" Matt demanded. "Fuckin' ghouls…."

I sprinted down the hall after it, slowly down when Charon walked a few feet in front of me. In low tones it spoke to the Wanderer, her head bowed by his—its—ear. Then suddenly it spun around to face me and demanded, "Whaddaya want, smoothskin?"

At that moment I froze, unable to think of some suitable response that would please the ghoul. Besides that, what _did_ I want? More than just to make sure the Wanderer ate, that much I knew. Her empty gaze, the odd ticks, the freakish appearance made me cringe just looking at her, and more than that, my stomach turned at the thought of her facing the Enclave. This frail skeleton facing President Eden would amount to little more than a disastrously bad joke.

"Go away," he said, and pointed behind me for effect. Red-faced with embarrassment, I could only obey, returning to the dining hall to finish the rat meat. What a meal. Kieran and Matt had waited for me, and Matt didn't mention the earlier incident, so I didn't either. For the rest of the night I forced laughter and could not shake the thought of the Wanderer walking away like that, hunched over like an old woman with one foot in the grave. How could Elder Lyons place his faith in this woman when some of our strongest men cannot defeat the Enclave?

Past midnight, I only tossed and turned, and growled in frustration when I found myself awake at five o'clock. Not much left to do but watch the sun rise over the Wasteland.

A pressure in my bladder forced me to drag myself to the restroom, but on my way back, as I passed the Wanderer's quarters, I heard the familiar clank of metal against metal. Curious, I knocked on the door, and the sound stopped at once.

"Got a minute?"

That gravel voice stopped me in my tracks on the way to my meeting with Scribe Peabody. "Sure, what is it?"

Jerking a thumb at the Wanderer, he said, "Y'don't mind if she eats in yer quarters from now on, do ya?"

"Not at all. Feel free. May I ask why?"

"No."

I shrugged, figuring that the answer would be clear enough pretty soon. And it was made clear that night when I returned to my quarters with a plateful of rat meat and found her sitting on my bed with a plateful of steak. Not only that, but she stuffed pieces in her mouth so quickly one would think her life depended on it. By the looks of her, it may have.

My jaw dropped. "Is that—"

"Shh, smoothskin. Don't let word out."

Glancing at Charon's plate, I saw that it ate the same rat meat as I. "Why—"

"Our food's foreign to her. Stomach can't take it—she was raised on the finest foods an' she'll throw up much else. You shoulda seen her when she bought me. Couldn't get anything at all."

So it was a slave, bound to her not by its own will. Yet unlike most of the bought and sold, it did not eye her with resentment but rather made every concern to ensure its master's well-being. I didn't often see that in humans, and never in ghouls. Then again, I didn't know many ghouls. "Where do you get that meat?"

"Brahmin farm a few miles from here. Owned by Raiders, but if I sneak in an' steal one slab every now an' then, they'll never know. Didn't think it'd be best to let the others see her eatin' it."

I nodded. "Very true. Why the change from her quarters, in the dead of night, to mine in the day?"

"Waitin' all day to let her eat wasn't the best plan. An' if more people took note of her not eatin', well, they might just look into it. Best they not see her at all, an' it'll go under their radar entirely."

She pushed the plate away and clutched her locket. "That looks nice," I said. "Can I see it?" After the last incident, it was the least I could do to make up for it, since showing off the picture made her so happy.

Shaking her head, she whispered, "No."

I glanced helplessly at Charon, and he only shrugged. "Radiation makes humans a little crazy."

"Radiation?"

"Her father filled a sealed room with radiation to kill many Enclave soldiers, but he died there as well. She was not there when it occurred, but when the others with her told her what had happened, she wouldn't stop trying to get in there. Punched through the glass and took a lungful of radiation, or a skinful, or whatever. Felt good to me, but she's never been the same again. Killed the other doctors, too. They didn't have ghouls to get 'em outta there."

"And was that when she…?"

"Started actin' crazy? No. She got the G.E.C.K., got her armor, helped with robot repairs, all perfectly human-like. No one noticed her here until she went back."

I looked at her again, and now she ran her hands up and down the sides of a pre-war comic book. _Grognak the Barbarian_. What the hell…? I shook my head to clear my thoughts. "Went back?"

"Went back to his grave, tellin' me to wait outside. I got a bad feelin' so I went back and found her kneelin' over him in that same damned room. _That's_ when she started actin' like this."

So Elder Lyons had not been mistaken in her importance in all of this. Unfortunately, whatever usefulness she once had hardly applied now. "Can she fight?"

"Anymore?" He snorted. "No. The Elder says that with time, she will be healed, and that is the day we will strike."

Watching her rock back and forth, listening to the off-key humming one of those pre-war tunes they played on GNR, I wondered how like that would take.


End file.
